Last year we bought a loganberry, tiny little thing it was. It grew and grew over the summer and we knew it wouldn't crop in its first year. We 'trained' it up some canes but it overtopped them and doubled back on itself. At the time, the other half thought the advice was to leave it be, but now I'm not so sure. Should we have pruned it? I believe the 'stems' themselves are called canes, and they are probably 8 ft long now, but they are just trailing (well three of them are, one is only about 18 inches). Two of them appear to have new buds but these are at the loose ends (so not near the main rooted part of the plant) so what on earth would we do with them if the grow another 6-8ft this year? One of the tips appears to have tried rooting itself in a crack in the flagstones.

So, what do we do with the long canes with the new growth? Is there anything we can do, or do we need to restrict the plant to the small 18-inch cane, which has new shoots, and go from there?

Loganberries fruit on last year's growth so do not prune them at this time, only after they have fruited. You will need to provide support to the fruiting growth to keep them off the ground. They are often grown up to wires and then horizontally along the wires, or even in circles around netting as in the photos on this page :- http://www.growyourown.info/page81.html

Many thanks. That certainly answers my question about not pruning them. We'll also have to think carefully about how to train the plant this year. The link provides further questions about 'tying in' but it sounds like I have time to work that out :) Thanks again

There are various styles of tying in the canes, (usually onto 3-4 rows of horizonal wires, spaced a foot apart) but the aim is to:

a) separate the new primocanes (1 year old growth) from the mature floricanes (2 year old growth). Makes life much easier when cutting out the harvested canes!

b) when the spent floricanes are cut out, the primocanes are still supple enough to gently bend into loops, waves or circles, so the monster curls up a bit and saves space without really affecting the crop size (some parts of the plant will end up with a bit less sunshine, but this very small loss is negated by the option of planting 2 loopy bushes close to each other instead of a single sprawler hogging all the room).

c) protect the canes from being damaged by strong winds whipping them about.